To save energy, the global trend of lighting equipment is transitioning from traditional incandescent light bulbs to compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) and Light Emitting Diode lamps (LEDs). To produce the same amount of light intensity, CFLs and LEDs can save 70% to 90% of energy than incandescent light bulbs. This is why governments around the world have passed regulations or measures to ban or stop the manufacture, importation or sale of incandescent light bulbs in order to phase out the old generation of lighting equipment and switch to a more energy-effective generation like CFLs and LEDs. However, most CFLs contain mercury, which is toxic and harmful to health and also harmful to the environment if it is not disposed properly. LEDs do not contain mercury but raise other health concern.
According to the paper “LED Lighting Flicker and Potential Health Concerns: IEEE Standard PAR1789 Update”, LED lighting produces flicker which is a rapid and repeated change over time in the brightness of light. Immediate result of a few seconds' exposure to visible flicker (low flicker frequency) can trigger epileptic seizures (even to individuals with no previous history or diagnosis of epilepsy) while long-term exposure to invisible flicker (high flicker frequency) would cause adverse health effects like malaise, headaches and impaired visual performance. As LED bulbs with different levels of flicker will cause different harmful effects to people, the flicker properties of LED would be a consumer's selection criteria other than the price.
In the literature, flicker percentage, flicker index and flicker frequency are the metrics used to describe how severe the flicker is. However, such information is often not available on the light bulb package while measuring these values needs professional equipment in the laboratory. Nevertheless, general consumers actually do not need to know the exact values of the flicker properties. In fact, consumers would be able to make a choice if they know Light Bulb A is at flicker level 1 which is the safest level to health while Light Bulb E is at flicker level 5 which will lead to serious harmful health effects, or if they know both Light Bulb B and Light Bulb C are at flicker level 3 but Light Bulb B is having less flickering than Light Bulb C. It is one objective of the present invention that consumers will be able to use their handy mobile phones to take videos of light bulbs and obtain such comparisons.
Due to the changing trend of lighting equipment, the health concern over the flicker problem and the lack of available information of flicker percentage, flicker index and flicker frequencies, there is a need for such a handy mobile application for consumer to check the bulbs before they make a purchase. There is a need to better inform the consumer. If consumers can make a better choice, they can avoid potential harmful effects to their health like epileptic seizures, malaise, headaches, impaired visual performance, etc., which in turn would improve students' learning quality and improve people's productivity. Hence, not only the health of the public but also the economy and the society would be benefited.
In industrial settings, when companies attend lighting equipment expo to look for new products or when companies receive products from the manufacturers, they always want to check whether the products are meeting the standard or acceptable. In these situations, the industry would require a mobile solution as a kind of handy preliminary quality screening. It is thus another objective of the present invention to provide such a mobile solution as a kind of handy preliminary quality screening of flickering light products.
Citation or identification of any reference in this section or any other section of this application shall not be construed as an admission that such reference is available as prior art for the present application.